What the heck is Yacht Rock?
To anyone who’s had this reaction upon first hearing the term, know that you’re not alone! Even for a fan, it’s hard to communicate the definition without punting and simply gesturing toward Michael McDonald and Steely Dan. Hopefully this page can articulate the concept for our thousands, perhaps millions of confused fans.
Yacht Rock is a specific assortment of soft rock and R&B that was made from around 1975 to 1984. Originally it was called the “West Coast sound” (if it was called anything at all), and it mostly kept that association with particular artists and personnel in the area. McDonald, Loggins, Toto, and more: the connective tissue may be hard to spot, but it’s there if you’re looking for it. For the most part, it’s about easy-going melodies, pristine production, and musical complexity well beyond anything else that was on the radio.
Much of our current difficulty comes from the fact that, while intimately tied to a specific place and time, nobody called it “yacht rock” there and then – not the people listening to it, and definitely not the people producing it. Genre labels are always a little late to the party; the definitions only arrive when people are already making it, but usually they don’t wait until after they’ve stopped making it. It wasn’t until 2005 that the Yacht Rock internet comedy series formalized the idea, two whole decades after this music left the spotlight.
While yacht rock may have begun as a pseudo-ironic moniker, the songs are just too good for it to have stayed that way. RipTide is us riding the wave of cover bands, radio stations, podcasts, and countless listeners, all spurred by sincere love for the music that inspired a generation.
Resources: For more information about the comedic videos and subsequent podcast that inspired the resurgence of this great genre of music, visit Wikipedia here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacht_Rock_(web_series)
The creators of the phrase Yacht Rock also ranked dozens of songs and deemed them Yacht or Nyacht depending on a variety of characteristics. It was their Yachtski scale with a score of 50 dividing yacht from nyacht. While we may differ on some of their judgements it’s still fun to see how they ranked our favorite songs. Visit: https://www.yachtornyacht.com/